my ear dr. told me ur not supposed to put qtips in your ear..they are for your outer ear.and over 60% of his patients come to him b/c of qtip mishaps.

why do i have an ear doctor...lolb/c of a qtip mishap.

i had put a qtip in my ear... and i got a chill... so twitched.. causing my shoulder to hit the qtip on my ear drum..lolit hurt for a minute...i saw some blood. but what really freaked me out was that i heard everything in echos..lol

I was so scared i was going deaf.. i went to the doctor.who told me give my drum some time to heal.

yeah i heard in echos for a week.. lolbut the worst part of the story was when I went to the ear dr. (the way mom's insurance worked.. was I had to see an audiologist before i got to see the specialist) minutes later.

so i see the audiologist.. and I'm by myself.. after he checks me up he goes"yup i see the damage...this could be permanent and you may continue to lose your hearing or you can stay like you are" (besides echoes...everything sounded really low.. like swimmears ear)

i went into the waiting room and started bawling.. I called my mommywe lived around the corner from the medical center.. and she had to come calm me down.

when i saw the specialist.. it was him who told me- ill be ok.. and to cut it out w/ the qtips etc.

A week does not pass where I have the opportunity to chastise yet another injured Q-tip user on the Ear Disorders Board
or in my own clinic. I had two today, including one admitted bobby-pin
user. I have a well-deserved reputation of being a venomous and
unsympathetic opponent of using Q-tips in the ear, so I thought this topic deserved another blog post.

Now, I use the term Q-tip, a brand name and registered trademark of
the Chesebrough-Pond/Unilever Company, and makers of Vaseline and other
slick products, in the generic sense. Since Q-tips are a lot easier to
say than “cotton-tipped applicators”, I will use this term. There are
certainly other manufacturers of cotton-tipped applicators out there,
but none with eighty years of manufacturing experience.

I always thought that the Q of Q-tip meant “quick” since others have
chosen to bastardize this fine brand name in this fashion. I was
surprised to discover that the Q actually means “quality”. Strangely
enough, I also discovered that Q-tips used to be called Baby Gays;
a name given to this product by its Polish inventor (I’m not going
there) that would not be considered politically-correct marketing today.

Let me say up front to ward off the lawyers of this fine company, that it is not the Q-tips that are the problem. It is the USERS of the Q-tips that I wish to address. Q-tips do not harm people; people harm people.

I wish that I had a box of Q-tips to check my facts, but I have been
told that the company has a warning on the box not to use them INSIDE
the ear. That is a very good and responsible statement. Unfortunately,
few people read the box or heed this warning.

“Q-Tips cotton swabs have more cotton at the tip* than
any other swab, making them the safest, softest and gentlest tool you
can use for family care. They also provide the ultimate precision,
making them the perfect tool for uses outside your ear.” (I added the italics to the word, “outside”).

Human beings have been digging around in their ears since the Dawn of Time. I bet even selective-hearing
Adam was cleaning out his ears during God’s “Don’t eat the apples”
lecture. Museums have examples of ivory and gold ear spoons that date
back thousands of years. When I was visiting Japan a few decades ago, a
cute little Japanese girl handed me a sample of a modern, disposable ear
spoon. That’s what the world needs: another product that can cause
potential harm.

We can blame some of this stuff on our parents and our parent’s
parents and so on. They were the ones that started the rumor that earwax
was bad stuff that had to be removed, like toe jam or a booger hanging
out of your nose. They could not have been more wrong.

While excess, hard, or obstructive earwax can be problematic, most earwax
(cerumen) is infinitely more beneficial. It is a normal, protective
coating for the sensitive skin of the ear canal. A canal coated with ear
wax will repel water and help prevent external ear infections. When you
dig it out like some demented gold miner, you leave your ear very
vulnerable.

Since we do not have the ability to look inside our own ears at the
present time (you can buy a video otoscope for under a thousand dollars
if you want), most Q-tip users blindly probe around looking for yellow,
often getting red instead. Many will look at their wax-stained swab with
pride and admiration of a job well done. Eventually, they will go too
far and injure or rupture their eardrums.
If it wasn’t for pain and blood, I suspect that some people would
excavate around until they pulled out little bones or brain tissue.
Perhaps, many have already done that.

Q-tips are not unlike the plungers used to load cannon. They can pack
softer wax deeply in the ear canal against the eardrum. By creating a
formidable plug and preventing the eardrum from moving normally, it is
quite easy to cause some significant hearing loss. Water can also be
trapped behind these self-created wax dams and entertain you by constant
sloshing around. When this happens, the ear will need to be lavaged —
washed out by a gentle stream of warm water. Or, you will need to see
your medical provider, someone that CAN look inside your ear and remove
the impaction professionally.

Chronic Q-tip use creates dryness in the sensitive ear canal. Dry skin
itches. People with itchy ears use Q-tips (and other found objects) to
scratch them. The scratching causes itching. Do you see the cycle here?
Eventually, the damaged skin will break down and crack, allowing
opportunistic bacteria or yucky fungus to invade. Congratulations. You
have caused otitis externa, also known as Swimmer’s Ear.

Speaking of swimmers, chronic water exposure can wash out all of the
protective wax, too, causing the water to remain in the ear canal. In
order to remove the water, people will use Q-tips, or put drops of
drying alcohol in the ear canal, often making the matters worse. I
recently tested a new product called DryEar, a portable/rechargeable ear
dryer. I loved it. It blows a gentle stream of warm air into the ear
canal to dry out that trapped water.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Q-tips; a fine, well-made
product. They have hundreds of clever uses. As long as you don’t put
them INSIDE your ears, they are a safe product. In the hands of idiots,
they are true Weapons of Ear Destruction.

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